A short history of every time Apple CEO Tim Cook praised augmented reality

A short history of every time Apple CEO Tim Cook praised augmented reality

Laura Normand / The Verge

The rumored debut of a “Reality Pro” headset is right around the corner, but Tim Cook has been singing the praises of AR for years.

With Tim Cook as CEO, Apple has become the most valuable company in the world, having passed a $3 trillion market cap in the past and sitting at around $2.6 trillion as of this writing. For all of his nearly 12 years as the head of the company, though, there hasn’t been one single product tied to him the way the iPhone, iPad, and revitalized Mac computers are so inextricably linked to Steve Jobs.

But while Cook’s impact on the company has largely been in his operational mastery and the massive pay-off of his strategy in pivoting to services, he’s consistently found time to talk about one platform as potentially game-changing without fully committing to the tech through actual new product releases: augmented reality.

That was despite Cook’s denigrations of early AR headgear like Google Glass. This would become a running theme: AR good, VR not so good. In September 2021, he went as far as to call himself “AR fan number one.” Although he once called virtual reality “really cool,” he’s also said it’s “for set periods, but not a way to communicate well” while taking swipes at the metaverse in an interview last year.

Now, on the eve of a presumed announcement of Apple’s new “Reality Pro” mixed reality headset, it's much easier to see where it was all going. The company has been slowly integrating the technology that will presumably breathe life into the new device for years, adding AR features to its iPhone and iPads that, while none of it has ever made more than a momentary splash, may have been crucial development experience for Apple.

One example is the 2019 Minecraft Earth demo at WWDC that showed a hint of Apple’s capabilities without tipping its hand about any new hardware. As you’ll see in his various comments from 2016 onward, while Cook mentions gaming, it sounds like his vision for the Reality Pro is much broader, viewing it as a collaborative technology consistent with Apple’s overall philosophy about creating tech that integrates with your life.

Here’s a brief history of all the times Tim Cook said he was convinced AR was the future.

July 2016: Cook says in a quarterly earnings call that “AR can be really great.”

We have been and continue to invest a lot in this. We are high on AR for the long run, we think there’s great things for customers and a great commercial opportunity. The number one thing is to make sure our products work well with other developers’ kind of products like Pokémon, that’s why you see so many iPhones in the wild chasing pokemons.

(Cook pronounces it “pokey-mans.”)

September 2016: Cook tells Good Morning America in an interview that he believes AR is a bigger deal than VR.

There’s virtual reality and there’s augmented reality — both of these are incredibly interesting. But my own view is that augmented reality is the larger of the two, probably by far.

[AR] gives the capability for both of us to sit and be very present, talking to each other, but also have other things — visually — for both of us to see. Maybe it’s something we’re talking about, maybe it’s someone else here who’s not here present but who can be made to appear to be present.

There’s a lot of really cool things there.

August 2016: Cook makes a brief mention of AR in a Washington Post profile:

I think AR [augmented reality] is extremely interesting and sort of a core technology. So, yes, it’s something we’re doing a lot of things on behind that curtain that we talked about.

October 2016: In an appearance at Utah Tech Tour, Cook goes into detail about how crucial AR may become and why he views it as superior to VR — while stressing that AR presents significant technology challenges before it can be adopted for mass consumerism.

In terms of it becoming a mass adoption [phenomenon], so that, say, everyone in here would have an AR experience, the reality to do that, it has to be something that everyone in here views to be an “acceptable thing.”

And nobody in here, few people in here, think it’s acceptable to be tethered to a computer walking in here and sitting down, few people are going to view that it’s acceptable to be enclosed in something, because we’re all social people at heart. Even introverts are social people, we like people and we want to interact. It has to be that it’s likely that AR, of the two, is the one the largest number of people will engage with.

I do think that a significant portion of the population of developed countries, and eventually all countries, will have AR experiences every day, almost like eating three meals a day, it will become that much a part of you, a lot of us live on our smartphones, the iPhone, I hope, is very important for everyone, so AR will become really big. VR I think is not going to be that big, compared to AR. I’m not saying it’s not important, it is important.

I’m excited about VR from an education point of view, I think it can be really big for education, I think it can be very big for games. But I can’t imagine everyone in here getting in an enclosed VR experience while you’re sitting in here with me. But I could imagine everyone in here in an AR experience right now, if the technology was there, which it’s not today. How long will it take?

AR is going to take a while, because there are some really hard technology challenges there. But it will happen, it will happen in a big way, and we will wonder when it does, how we ever lived without it. Like we wonder how we lived without our phone today.

October 2016: Cook tells BuzzFeed News that while “VR has some interesting applications,” AR is superior to VR because “there’s no substitute for human contact. And so you want the technology to encourage that.”

Augmented reality will take some time to get right, but I do think that it’s profound. We might ... have a more productive conversation, if both of us have an AR experience standing here, right? And so I think that things like these are better when they’re incorporated without becoming a barrier to our talking. ... You want the technology to amplify it, not to be a barrier.

February 2017: Cook expands his thoughts on AR’s potential, adding a new comparison: AR is a big idea, like the smartphone.

I’m excited about augmented reality because unlike virtual reality which closes the world out, AR allows individuals to be present in the world but hopefully allows an improvement on what’s happening presently. Most people don’t want to lock themselves out from the world for a long period of time and today you can’t do that because you get sick from it. With AR you can, not be engrossed in something, but have it be a part of your world, of your conversation. That has resonance.

I regard it as a big idea like the smartphone. The smartphone is for everyone, we don’t have to think the iPhone is about a certain demographic, or country or vertical market: it’s for everyone. I think AR is that big, it’s huge. I get excited because of the things that could be done that could improve a lot of lives. And be entertaining. I view AR like I view the silicon here in my iPhone, it’s not a product per se, it’s a core technology. But there are things to discover before that technology is good enough for the mainstream. I do think there can be a lot of things that really help people out in daily life, real-life things, that’s why I get so excited about it.

June 2017: In a wide-ranging interview with Bloomberg News, Cook details his vision for AR at Apple:

I think it is profound. I am so excited about it, I just want to yell out and scream. The first step in making it a mainstream kind of experience is to put it in the operating system. We’re building it into iOS 11, opening it to ­developers—and unleashing the creativity of millions of people. Even we can’t predict what’s going to come out.

There’s some things that you can already get a vision of. We’ve talked to IKEA, and they have 3D images of their furniture line. You’re talking about changing the whole experience of how you shop for, in this case, furniture and other objects that you can place around the home. You can take that idea and begin to think this is something that stretches from enterprise to consumer. There’s not a lot of things that do that.

You’ll see things happening in enterprises where AR is ­fundamental to what they’re doing. You’re going to see some consumer things that are unbelievably cool. Can we do everything we want to do now? No. The technology’s not complete yet. But that’s the beauty to a certain degree. This has a runway. And it’s an incredible runway. It’s time to put the seat belt on and go. When people begin to see what’s possible, it’s going to get them very excited—like we are, like we’ve been.

October 2017: At an event at Oxford, Cook responds to a student who asks what technology he would consider “transformative.” Cook says there are widespread uses for AR:

I’m incredibly excited by AR because I can see uses for it everywhere. I can see uses for it in education, in consumers, in entertainment, in sports. I can see it in every business that I know anything about.

I also like the fact that it doesn’t isolate. I don’t like our products being used a lot. I like our products amplifying thoughts and I think AR can help amplify the human connection. I’ve never been a fan of VR like that because I think it does the opposite. There are clearly some cool niche things for VR but it’s not profound in my view. AR is profound.

October 2017: In an interview with Vogue UK, Cook says while Apple wasn’t looking to build a “giant database of clothes,” it would support companies in the AR space who were doing this work.

If you think about a runway show in the fashion world, that’s a great application of AR because some of these, you want to see the dress all the way around, you do not want to just see the front.

November 2017: With the introduction of its ARKit platform on iOS 11, Cook says in a quarterly earnings call that Apple has created the world’s largest augmented reality platform:

There already are over a thousand apps with powerful AR features in our App Store today with developers creating amazing new experiences in virtually every category of app aimed at consumers, students and business users alike.

Put simply, we believe AR is going to change the way we use technology forever. We’re already seeing things that will transform the way you work, play, connect and learn. For example, there are AR apps that you interact with virtual models of everything you can imagine from the human body to the solar system. And of course you experience them like you’re really there.

Instantly education becomes much more powerful when every subject comes to life in 3D. And imagine shopping when you can place an object in your living room before you make a purchase – or attending live sporting events when you can see the stats on the field. AR is going to change everything.

This is not quite what came to pass (more on that later).

October 2017: Post-ARKit launch, Cook admits he thinks AR technology for headsets or glasses isn’t yet up to par as far as Apple is concerned.

I can tell you the technology itself doesn’t exist to do that in a quality way. The display technology required, as well as putting enough stuff around your face — there’s huge challenges with that. The field of view, the quality of the display itself, it’s not there yet.

We don’t give a rat’s about being first, we want to be the best, and give people a great experience. But now anything you would see on the market any time soon would not be something any of us would be satisfied with. Nor do I think the vast majority of people would be satisfied.

Most technology challenges can be solved, but it’s a matter of how long.

February 2018: During Apple’s Q1 earnings call, Cook described “great excitement” around augmented reality among customers.

Augmented reality is going to revolutionize many of the experiences we have with mobile devices, and with ARKit, we’re giving developers the most advanced tools on the market to create apps for the most advanced operating system running on the most advanced hardware. This is something only Apple can do.

October 2018: Cook tells NowThisNews during an interview about Apple’s Watch that AR is poised to become indispensable.

I think that one day we will wonder how we ever lived without it. We can have a much more enhanced conversation with the power of AR. The future is now.

January 2020: Cook tells an audience in Dublin, Ireland, that augmented reality “is the next big thing” and that it will “pervade our entire lives.” He gives an example of a company using AR and describes its potential uses.

Yesterday, I visited a development company called War Ducks … in Dublin – 15 people and they’re staffing up and using AR for games. You can imagine, for games it’s incredible but even for our discussion here. You and I might be talking about an article and using AR we can pull it up, and can both be looking at the same thing at the same time.

I think it’s something that doesn’t isolate people. We can use it to enhance our discussion, not substitute it for human connection, which I’ve always deeply worried about in some of the other technologies.

April 2021: During an interview with journalist Kara Swisher Cook agreed with her that augmented reality is “a critically important part of Apple’s future.” He imagines AR being used in health, education, retail, and gaming.

I’m already seeing AR take off in some of these areas with use of the phone. And I think the promise is even greater in the future.

September 2021: In an interview with tech YouTuber iJustine, Cook said that he was AR’s number one fan and reiterated his hopes for it as a collaboration tool.

I am so excited about AR. I think AR is one of these very few profound technologies that we will look back on one day and went, how did we live our lives without it? And so right now you can experience it in thousands of ways using your iPad or your iPhone, but of course, those will get better and better over time.

Already it’s a great way to shop, it’s a great way to learn. It enhances the learning process. I can’t wait for it to be even more important in collaboration and so forth.

So I’m AR fan number one. I think it’s that big.

After a comment from Justine about the future impact of AR, he continued:

I mean, simple things today that you can use it for, like if you’re shopping for a sofa, or a chair, or a lamp, in terms of really experiencing it in your place, we’ve never been able to do that before until the last couple years or so. And that’s at the early innings of AR. It will only get better.

June 2022: During WWDC 2022, Cook told the state-run outlet China Daily AR needs to focus on humanity:

“I am incredibly excited about AR as you may know, and the critical thing in any technology, including AR, is putting humanity at the center of it. That is what we focus on every day,”

September 2022: During a livestream at the Universitá Degli Studi di Napoli Federico II in Naples, Italy, Cook said he thinks we will wonder how we lived without AR:

I think that we’ve had a great conversation here today, but if we could augment that with something from the virtual world, it would have arguably been even better. So I think that if you, and this will happen clearly not too long from now, if you... zoom out to the future and look back, you’ll wonder how you led your life without augmented reality. Just like today, we wonder, how did people like me grow up without the internet.

April 2023: Cook again explained Apple’s interest in AR while being interviewed by GQ’s Zach Baron:

If you think about the technology itself with augmented reality, just to take one side of the AR/VR piece, the idea that you could overlay the physical world with things from the digital world could greatly enhance people’s communication, people’s connection.

We might be able to collaborate on something much easier if we were sitting here brainstorming about it and all of a sudden we could pull up something digitally and both see it and begin to collaborate on it and create with it.

Baron then paraphrased Cook’s proposal that users could measure a glass pane or put some art up on the wall. Cook also said Apple isn’t trying to follow up anyone else’s efforts:

Can we make a significant contribution, in some kind of way, something that other people are not doing? Can we own the primary technology? I’m not interested in putting together pieces of somebody else’s stuff. Because we want to control the primary technology. Because we know that’s how you innovate.

What’s Apple’s plan for AR?

Clearly, Tim Cook has been bullish on AR for a long time. Until we see the new headset, the extent of Apple’s foray into AR will have been the 2017 launch of ARKit — which use iPhones’ and iPads’ cameras and sensors to overlay images in 3D space when the device is pointed at a given area — for iOS 11. ARKit is available across Apple’s devices, which has spurred a lot of cool little projects by amateur AR enthusiasts. When it launched, The Verge wrote that the tech had the potential to allow Apple to catch rival Google in the AR space.

Ultimately, AR on phones, for most people, probably means the occasional quick measurement or level check when you can’t find your bubble leveler. And let’s not forget plopping a virtual chair in your room, which is an admittedly cool use of AR. But one of the most striking examples of what a combination of AI and augmented reality can produce was the recent introduction of TikTok’s “Bold Glamour” face filter, which had been used in over 58 million videos by mid-May.

There have been fun apps that take advantage of ARKit beyond those use cases — Tim Cook loved the Statue of Liberty AR app enough that he cited it when he tweeted about the transformative power of AR. And, of course, there’s Pokémon Go, though that game may have been lightning in a bottle, with nothing having achieved its massive success since.

In short, the company’s AR work on phones hasn’t been the sort of bombshell that Cook’s words hint at. It’s not clear yet that the Apple mixed reality headset’s debut will be any different, at least in the short term.

Reports started trickling out in 2018 that Apple had a timeline to launch both an AR headset and AR glasses. By 2019, the company reportedly had 1,000 engineers working on its VR and AR initiative codenamed “T288”.

Rumors are heavily pointing to a WWDC 2023 reveal, possibly under the name “Reality Pro.” Descriptions available so far lay out a mixed-reality device that can seamlessly switch between AR and VR with a dial not unlike the Apple Watch’s digital crown, with an M2 Ultra processor and an external battery pack.

But it's a first-run product that will probably come with first-run problems that will need dedicated work from Apple and good third-party support to ensure long-term success. There are supporters and detractors both inside the company and out, but given Cook’s enthusiasm and the Reality Pro’s long development period, it’s probable Apple is in it for the long haul.

It shouldn’t be all that surprising that Apple has taken its time making the Reality Pro, or whatever it’s actually called. This is, after all, the company that introduced the AirPower wireless charging pad, showed it off to the world, then canceled the product because it wasn’t up to company standards — and that was just a charging accessory, not a potential new computing paradigm.

Update September 16th, 12:40PM ET: Added quote from his post-Apple event interview with iJustine.

Update June 5th, 2023, 12:40PM ET: Added quotes from this April GQ profile and additional information about the headset ahead of its rumored introduction at WWDC 2023.

Augmented reality needs an iPhone moment

Augmented reality needs an iPhone moment

Apple turned the iPod into a status symbol. A headset might be a taller order. | Photo by Justin Sullivan / Getty Images

‘This is the single greatest thing that could happen to this industry.’

As Apple prepares its long-rumored jump into augmented reality on Monday, doubts have shadowed every step of the way. There are reports of frequent changes in direction and skepticism inside Apple’s ranks. The device has allegedly been hard to manufacture and required numerous compromises. The process has taken years longer than Apple expected. And at a rumored $3,000, even Apple reportedly expects slow short-term sales.

But among AR professionals, the mood is jubilant. “This is the single greatest thing that could happen to this industry,” says Jay Wright, CEO of VR / AR collaboration platform Campfire 3D. “Whether you make hardware or software. We’re excited about it.”

No industry needs Apple’s “it just works” ethos like AR

Building on positive reviews from industry trailblazers like Palmer Luckey, AR hardware and software makers say Apple can finally validate a decade of attempts to take the technology mainstream. Some of this optimism is driven by Apple’s rumored specs, including a lightweight design and a supposedly extraordinarily high-spec screen.

Proponents point to Apple’s history of entering a market once other companies have laid the groundwork, as it did with phones. But much of it can be summed up in two statements: Apple can sell hardware, and Apple is cool.

@verge

Apple is widely expected to reveal the headset, potentially called the “Reality Pro,” at WWDC, which kicks off on June 5th. #Apple #WWDC #AppleHeadset #Tech #TechTok

♬ original sound - The Verge

No tech category needs Apple’s “it just works” promise more than AR. (This format is sometimes called “mixed reality” or “XR,” just to underscore how muddled the consumer pitch is.) Pure consumer VR — while a small market — has coalesced around relatively popular genres like fitness apps, a few common storefronts like SteamVR and the Quest store, and a widely used controller scheme.

AR has no such guarantees.

Its hardware is wildly varied, ranging from bulky headsets with sophisticated tracking to smart glasses that do little more than show alerts. Its software is often geared toward hyper-specialized business uses. There’s no settled consensus on control schemes.

Based on numerous leaks, Apple’s headset uses what’s called “passthrough” AR. It features high-resolution screens and is capable of running full VR applications, but it’s also studded by cameras that can pass through a high-resolution image of the real world — according to rumors, you’ll hit a “reality dial” to switch between AR and VR. That means it can offer the illusion of a real world with virtual objects overlaid on it.

Passthrough avoids some of the problems that AR glasses like Magic Leap and Microsoft HoloLens face, like translucent virtual objects and a limited field of view. Meta, the biggest player in consumer headsets, chose the style for its Quest Pro design last year. But the Quest Pro had a grainy, washed-out video feed and offered limited practical applications for its AR mode. A virtual office, for instance, required a convoluted syncing process with your Mac or PC. And Meta has generally focused on the lower end of the VR and AR market — it’s also including passthrough as a selling point on the upcoming $499 Quest 3.

By contrast, multiple people speculated that Apple’s headset could be like the Tesla Roadster: a flashy, expensive sports car that sold people on the concept of electric vehicles. “Apple makes devices in a way that are actually useful and comfortable to people and make people care about it,” says Jacob Loewenstein, SVP of 3D social platform Spatial, which has appeared on numerous AR and VR devices.

“There’s going to be so much garbage out there, and there’s going to be some cool stuff, too.”

The exact uses of Apple’s rumored tech aren’t known yet. CEO Tim Cook has said AR is for “communication” and “connection,” and it will reportedly feature FaceTime capability that can render a person’s face and body. It’s said to also offer access to iPad apps, games, entertainment via Apple’s TV app, and a version of Apple Fitness Plus. “One of the reasons why I think Apple is immensely successful in many of their ventures is they’re not just launching a device, they’re launching an ecosystem,” says Gartner analyst Tuong Nguyen, who covers the VR / AR market. “It’s that combination of different applications applied to different use cases for different users — that is the ‘killer app.’”

Apple reportedly isn’t expecting a large early market for the device — it’s revised its expectations downward to under a million units a year, compared to 200 million or more iPhones. Still, despite the device’s rumored cost, some predict a gold rush of app designers trying to replicate the success of early iPhone developers. “I’ve been like, wait, why am I not making some goofy version of some application that everyone likes — like, being one of the first to-do apps on the Apple headset?” says Gabe Baker, VP of browser-based VR collaboration platform Frame. “There’s going to be so much garbage out there, and there’s going to be some cool stuff, too — it’s going to be a fun time.”

Apple has an ambivalent relationship with web developers, who form a niche but notable subset of the AR / VR industry. Safari has badly lagged at supporting WebXR, a common standard for browser-based immersive experiences, on iOS. But the browser is reportedly launching on its headset, which will put web-based AR in the spotlight. “We’re cautiously optimistic that Apple will actually make Safari a viable application on their upcoming hardware,” says Baker. “Meta has shown that the web browser can actually be a vehicle for high quality immersive content, hands-down, and I think Apple will want that on their headset.”

The iPhone’s decade-plus dominance has demonstrated plenty of downsides to “it just works.” Apple has mastered the walled garden, and many app developers who work inside it aren’t happy with the results. It’s spent years fighting some prominent developers like Epic and Match Group in court, and others have testified in Congress about having their apps locked down and undercut by Apple’s own copycats.

Apple is still pushing into a field that’s bested some of the biggest companies in tech

But for AR and VR developers, the alternative to an Apple walled garden may be a desert. Many apps — particularly non-gaming ones — have pivoted onto more conventional computing devices as one headset after another has failed to capture a consumer market. A key exception has been Meta, which has defied expectations with its Quest 2 for VR. That’s raised the opposite problem: a system where some developers and regulators worry Meta could monopolize the nascent industry, and some competing hardware companies have expressed irritation at the Quest’s rock-bottom, ad-subsidized prices.

“I think the other thing that’s compelling is the arms race that it starts between Meta and Apple. We’ve never really had these two titans go head to head before on a new platform,” says Loewenstein. And even for hardware makers, Apple’s entry isn’t necessarily a bad thing — the AR glasses market is small enough that any new attention to the space is welcome.

Despite the excitement inside the industry, Apple is still pushing into a field that has bested some of the biggest companies in tech. Google and Microsoft have both debuted AR headsets with flashy consumer-friendly applications (in Microsoft’s case, an AR edition of Minecraft) only to end up with a far less ambitious enterprise-focused product. So has the lavishly funded startup Magic Leap.

Moreover, few people seem to think passthrough AR is an endpoint for the medium. As Nguyen points out, a passthrough headset poses basic safety risks compared to a more glasses-like system: if its video feed stutters or goes dark, it temporarily blinds the user. That makes it risky to use outside a controlled home or office environment. “I see the Apple device as being a replacement of my iMac,” says Nima Shams, VP at DigiLens, a longtime maker of optics for glasses-style headsets. “I don’t see the device being a replacement of my iPhone.” Apple has reportedly been working on a transparent, non-passthrough headset, too — but it’s not what anyone expects to see on Monday.

There are pragmatic reasons to believe Apple’s better positioned than these companies. For one thing, the tech has matured significantly since Google started testing Glass in 2012, Microsoft announced HoloLens in 2015, and Magic Leap revealed its first product in 2018. For another, Apple has a consumer hardware track record that virtually no other company can match. That includes not only carefully produced industrial design and interfaces like trackpads but, in recent years, its own fairly powerful chips. “If we were facing rumors of a similar headset made by someone not Apple, I don’t think it would be all that successful,” says IDC research manager Jitesh Ubrani. “Apple has huge scale, huge developer support, huge consumer support — and no one else comes even close to that.”

But the most emotionally compelling argument is simply that Apple can make even weird-looking products — like AirPods, compared to everything from Q-tips to sperm — socially acceptable. As Loewenstein puts it, “the key has always been very, very simple: is this thing useful? Is this thing comfortable? And is this thing cool?” Meta has demonstrated VR’s value for games, but the company’s uncoolness is a running joke, from the famous picture of an MWC audience strapped into headsets to CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s much-maligned legless avatar. “I think Apple has the cool factor.”

And if it doesn’t? Well, if you’ve stuck around the world of consumer AR for this long, you can probably handle disappointment.

Blaseball season is over for good

Blaseball season is over for good

Blaseball is no more. | Image: Alex Castro / The Verge

Born during covid, Blaseball was a bizarre text-only fantasy baseball simulator that imagined, essentially, baseball as played in a world of otherworldly horrors.

I regret that I never got to play Blaseball, and now it looks like I won’t get to because developer The Game Band is shutting it down. The company is laying off its Blaseball development team and will provide them with severance pay, healthcare extensions, and a dedicated staff member for job search help.

It was a remarkable example of procedural storytelling. Blaseball players could bet on the games to win points throughout a given week, where chance encounters, Dungeons & Dragons-style could rend games, and reality itself, asunder. At the end of the week, Blaseball’s community could spend their points to vote on new rules for the game, and in true D&D fashion, anything could happen. Or at least that’s what I gather from this delightful recap of what became known as The Discipline Era:

We have folks in 3D Art, Community Management, Engineering, Game Design, Production, Product Design, or QA that we’d love to find a good place for.

If you are hiring, please reach out. We have some exceptional people to introduce to you.

— The Game Band (@thegameband) June 2, 2023

As a quick summary of some of the highlights, The Discipline Era saw a hellmouth open that devoured the Moab desert, three eldritch gods in the form of a giant peanut, a huge floating microphone that may have been a player’s ghost or something, and, naturally, a massive squid that seemed to mostly hang out, but once tried to eat someone. A powerful grand slam blasted the spacetime continuum apart, splitting Los Angeles into infinite parallel versions of itself, prompting its name to be changed from The Los Angeles Tacos to The Infinite Tacos.

After pissing off The Great Shelled One by not respecting its idols, it entombed the three most idolized players in giant peanut shells. The community somehow resurrected them, and there was some sort of supernatural financial kerfuffle?

Also, there was crow weather.

Samuel Fung created a wonderful write-up for The Verge that covers the season from a player’s perspective, and it’s well worth a read.

Anyway, of its discontinuation, Blaseball’s developers said this:

The short of it is that Blaseball isn’t sustainable to run. Since Blaseball’s inception, we’ve been fighting against the amount of work it takes to keep Blaseball true to itself while financially supporting the team and keeping our staff healthy. We’ve tried countless solutions to make it work, and we’ve come to the conclusion that this fight isn’t one we can win in the long run. The cost, literally and metaphorically, is too high.

Blaseball developed an incredibly devoted online fandom, one that even established a merch store full of fan-created apparel, Blaseball cards (ahem... TLOPPS cards), mugs, and more, where all profits were given to charity. The store will continue to operate until June 30, 2023, and will then be shut down as well.

It sounds like it was a beautiful three-ish year run, and I’m sad I kept forgetting to be a part of it.

Star Wars: KOTOR II for the Switch won’t get its game-finishing DLC

Star Wars: KOTOR II for the Switch won’t get its game-finishing DLC

KOTOR II’s game-finishing DLC isn’t coming. | Image: Aspyr Media

The Nintendo Switch port of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II is not getting the free Restored Content DLC that developer Aspyr Media promised at launch, the company announced late yesterday on Twitter. Instead, the studio is offering a consolation prize of free Star Wars game keys for anyone who has bought the game, which Aspyr says can be done through its support page (though it doesn’t specify how).

The apology games include the original KOTOR Switch port, KOTOR II on Steam, Star Wars: Episode I Racer, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and others.

Update on the Restored Content DLC pic.twitter.com/P0TQtJsgRc

— Aspyr (@AspyrMedia) June 3, 2023

The Restored Content DLC started as a fan-made mod that incorporated parts of the game that were cut from its original release, as some considered the game to be incomplete in its published form.

Aspyr’s Switch port of KOTOR II was somehow even less complete at launch. Like, you couldn’t actually beat the game. The developer admitted to being aware of the problem, and issued a fix the following month. After that flawed execution and a poor showing at a demo with Lucasfilm and Sony, Aspyr’s parent company, Embracer Group, shuffled the port of the first Knights of the Old Republic game over to Saber Interactive, citing a desire to “ensure the quality bar is where we need it to be for the title.”

We’ve reached out to Aspyr for more information, and will update if we receive a response.

How the Shoggoth Meme Has Come to Symbolize the State of A.I.

How the Shoggoth Meme Has Come to Symbolize the State of A.I. The Shoggoth, a character from a science fiction story, captures the essential weirdness of the A.I. moment.

The MSI Prestige 16 Studio Evo could be the most exciting Windows laptop of 2023

The MSI Prestige 16 Studio Evo could be the most exciting Windows laptop of 2023

* rubbing hands together * Yes. Yessssss.

Amid all the excitement over generative AI, valuations, and such, consumer PC news was a bit of an afterthought at Computex 2023. That’s why I was so excited to discover this gem buried in the middle of MSI’s very loud and crowded show floor booth: the Prestige 16 Studio Evo. This is coming in the second half of this year, with pricing still to be announced, and I am very eagerly waiting.

First things first: This device has received Intel’s coveted “Evo” certification. The reason this is exciting is that, to my knowledge, no device with a GeForce RTX GPU has received the Evo certification since the program’s inception in 2020. (It’s possible there’s one out there somewhere I don’t know about, but even if so, it’s still a very rare phenomenon.)

The reasons for this are somewhat obvious. To earn the Evo certification, Intel requires that a device offer a certain level of battery life and performance within a certain weight class, which is difficult to achieve with a power-hungry discrete GPU inside. But the Studio Evo can include up to a GeForce RTX 4060 — and that’s a legitimate GPU that should lend a big hand in gaming and graphic work, unlike some of the weaker MX chips that you often see in these thin-and-lights, which aren’t too distinguishable from Intel’s integrated offerings these days. MSI’s representatives were very clear with me at the booth that the RTX 4060 model, specifically, is Evo-rated.

Small numpad for your number needs.

Now, in my experience, the Evo label is not always guarantee of things like speedy performance and all-day battery life. Nevertheless, the fact that an RTX 4060 system was performing efficiently enough that Intel would even consider it for the program excites me greatly.

Recommending a really solid Windows laptop for content creators right now is tough, and I think there are real openings in the market this Prestige 16 could fill. It can be a real pain to use programs like Premiere Pro and Blender on a 14-inch screen, and I often advise professionals to go bigger if they can. But 15-inch and 16-inch devices with discrete GPUs inside them can get really heavy really fast — which is also not great for many video folks, who may need to carry their laptop to shoots alongside lots of other bulky gear. I’ve been waiting — like really, eagerly waiting — for a 16-inch device with a discrete GPU to come along that isn’t a total tank. A solid battery lifespan would really seal the deal.

The Prestige 16 Studio Evo is 3.3 pounds — close to pound and a half lighter than the 16-inch MacBook Pro. I can tell you, having held the thing, that it is very light. LG Gram light. “Are you sure this isn’t an empty chassis?” light. It would be a dream to carry around in a packed backpack. I’m wistful just remembering what it was like to pick this up.

This was after I’d attempted to smudge the lid. Not too bad.

That’s especially true because the finish feels a solid step above what I’ve experienced from MSI before — this company often puts out laptops that are covered in fingerprints like, five seconds after unboxing. I tried very hard to smudge the Prestige’s lid on the show floor, and I actually couldn’t.

The Prestige 16 Studio Evo also has a 99Whr battery, which is the largest battery you can bring on a plane (and thus, the largest you will likely see in a consumer laptop).

Look at those ports. Gorgeous!

Here, more.

There’s one more nifty thing about this product, which is that it looks like it might be one of the first 14th-Gen Meteor Lake laptops we’ve seen in the wild. The spec sheet in the booth just lists “latest Intel Core i7 processor,” and — as Notebookcheck also discovered — the processor in the show floor unit was simply listed in Device Manager as “Genuine Intel(R) 0000” and showed 22 threads. It certainly is not a 13th-Gen mobile i7, since there’s not a 22-thread offering in that lineup.

Now, I don’t want to get my hopes up or jinx anything. But I’m wondering whether maybe, just maybe, this is a good sign for the efficiency of the upcoming Meteor Lake generation. After all, many of today’s workstation laptops have bad battery life and a hefty chassis for a reason: Intel’s current heavyweight processors are inefficient and hot.

The phrase “MacBook Pro alternative” is thrown around a lot. But this Prestige is shaping up to be one of the closest contenders I’ve seen in 2023 so far. Now, let’s wait to hear about the price.

Photography by Monica Chin

How to control what boots up with Windows

How to control what boots up with Windows

Illustration by Samar Haddad / The Verge

When Windows boots up, it’s not just the operating system loading itself into memory: a variety of other apps, tools, and services start up as well, configured to automatically start up with Windows. And depending on what you’ve installed, many of them may be starting up without your knowledge or consent.

Sometimes this can be very useful, especially when you don’t have to worry about forgetting to launch something important. You want to make sure your antivirus software is always running, for example, and that your media server or backup software is always available. On the other hand, as you add more and more applications to your computer, a lot of them may be set to automatically start up with Windows, which means it takes longer for Windows to get ready for use, and there are more programs constantly running in the background, taking up precious system resources.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that Windows gives you plenty of control over which applications start up with the operating system itself, so you can streamline the list to make sure only the most useful tools are included.

Check what’s running

First of all, it helps to know what you’re dealing with: restart Windows, and after logging in, give your computer a few minutes for everything to load up. Then you can take a look at what’s running.

The most obvious places you will see which apps have loaded are on the taskbar and in the system tray (down in the lower right corner, by the clock). Look for the small arrow pointing up; if you click on that, it will show you all the loaded apps whose icons didn’t fit in that right-hand space.

Check the system tray to see which apps started up with Windows.

For a more detailed look at what’s running on your system, right-click on a blank area of the taskbar and choose Task Manager. On the Processes tab, you’ll see your main applications (all those that are currently running) at the top, with background processes listed underneath. These background processes handle jobs such as looking out for hardware accessories or managing file syncing and won’t necessarily have a user interface.

If you scroll further down the list, you’ll find Windows processes, which manage the running of the operating system. Processes include things like the Desktop Window Manager and a bunch labeled Service Host (which load the libraries Windows needs to run), among others. Most of the time, you’re not going to have to interfere with these processes (with the possible exception of the registry, which you may occasionally delve into for specific fixes).

Helpfully, to the right of each program and process, the Task Manager displays the current demands it is making on the CPU, RAM, disk, and network connection. This can help you decide which apps you want to allow to start up with Windows and which you’d rather launch manually — even if a program is useful, you might decide you don’t want it to run automatically because of how many system resources it needs.

Task Manager shows you what’s currently running.

Don’t worry if you don’t recognize everything in the background processes list; they won’t all come with a software program (like Dropbox or Photoshop) attached to their name. A quick web search for the process name should be enough to tell you what it is and what its job is on your system. And here, you need to be a bit more careful because of how closely background processes are integrated with Windows. Be sure you know what a process is doing and what it’s associated with before you stop it.

Switch to the Performance tab on the left to see the demands currently being put on your Windows PC and the App history tab to see CPU time, network usage, and notifications for all of your programs over the past month.

Making changes

We’re halfway there — now that you know what you’re dealing with, you can begin to make some changes. The first place to start is with the applications themselves, and the approach you need to take will vary from app to app.

On some apps, you just have to right-click on the program icon in the system tray, and you’ll find the option to have the app start up or not start up with Windows.

NordVPN is one of the apps where you can control if it launches at boot-up by going into its Settings.

With other apps, you’ll need to dive deeper into the settings to find the option you need. For example, if you want to change how music app Spotify opens when you boot up:

• In the Spotify app, click your profile icon (top right), then Settings.
• Scroll down to Startup and window behavior and look for Open Spotify automatically after you log into the computer. Click on the drop-down menu next to it.
• Choose Yes (Spotify starts with Windows), No (Spotify doesn’t start with Windows), or Minimized (Spotify starts with Windows, but out of sight).

Note that quite a few programs offer this “start minimized” option — NordVPN is another one that we’ve seen. It’s a good middle-ground option if you want to have a program always available (and it’s not too demanding on your system resources), but you don’t want to see it until you need it.

Using Task Manager to switch startup

If you can’t find the relevant option in the program itself, or if you want to change more than one program at a time, head to the Task Manager again.

• Open the Startup apps pane.
• Right-click on a program you don’t want to start with Windows and choose Disable.
• To reinstate an app, right-click on it and choose Enable.

Incidentally, as long as you’re in the Startup apps page, you may want to check the column headed Boot-up impact, which tells you the amount of your computer’s resources the app uses. If your computer slows down or hits any similar issues, shutting down apps that have high impact might help.

You can also use the Task Manager to prevent apps from automatically starting with Windows.

This doesn’t affect the status of the program in terms of its Start menu or desktop shortcuts or anything else; it’s still available to launch as normal. (Of course, completely uninstalling a program is also an option for those applications you’re not making any use of at all, as it’ll free up disk space and reduce system clutter.)

When it comes to background processes, you should find that they close down when their parent application is disabled. If you’re still seeing mysterious processes that don’t appear to be linked to a program (in other words, its name doesn’t reference any known apps), you can run a search for them online. You can also right-click on them in the Startup apps list and choose Properties to see information such as where they’re located (which should then tell you what app they’ve been installed with).

If Apple wants its headset to win, it needs to reinvent the app

If Apple wants its headset to win, it needs to reinvent the app

Illustration by Hugo Herrera for The Verge

If Apple’s mixed reality headset is going to succeed, it’s going to be because of the apps. On Monday, Apple will take the stage at its 2023 Worldwide Developers Conference to talk about FaceTime and Apple Books and all the other cool built-in stuff you’ll be able to do with its ski goggles strapped to your face. But if it can’t get third-party developers on board, and those developers don’t figure out how to build life-changingly great stuff for those goggles, the Reality Pro (or whatever it’s called) doesn’t stand a chance.

Apple knows this better than anyone, of course. The iPhone took off when apps like Instagram and Uber showed what you could do with a camera and a GPS in your pocket. The iPad became a creative tool because creative people kept building cool stuff to do on such a huge touchscreen. And developers at places like Nike and Strava did more to make the case for the Apple Watch than Apple’s Walkie Talkie app and weird heartbeat-sending thing ever did. Apple’s product strategy for 15 years has been to make the coolest gadget it can, show it to developers, and ask them what they think.

To make the headset really work, though, Apple’s going to need more than just apps. Because a good headset is more than just a big screen; it’s a new way of interacting with a gadget and with apps. That means that 15 years after the launch of the App Store, when Apple turned the iPhone into the app machine it is now, it’s going to have to reboot the whole idea of what an app is and how it works. And it won’t be easy.

An ocean of icons

By and large, every app is a universe unto itself. The whole structure of the app ecosystem is such that the first step of every process is to open an app. There’s no command line equivalent through which you can execute tasks across the whole system; even things like search work far better in apps than across all of iOS.

Apple has been trying to change this for years. Every year, almost without fail, Apple has a Big New Idea About Apps. At WWDC, in addition to all the changes to Reminders and new locations for URL bars in Safari, Apple nearly always tries to change the way you interact with apps and they interact with each other. Want proof? Here’s an incomplete list of the Big New Ideas About Apps Apple has shown off at WWDC since the iPhone launched:

• 2008 (iPhone OS 2.0): The App Store
• 2009 (iPhone OS 3.0): In-app purchases, push notifications
• 2010 (iOS 4): Multitasking
• 2011 (iOS 5): The notification center
• 2012 (iOS 6): Siri, the share sheet
• 2013 (iOS 7): Lock screen notifications, Spotlight search
• 2014 (iOS 8): Continuity, Handoff, widgets
• 2015 (iOS 9): 3D Touch, Proactive Intelligence
• 2016 (iOS 10): iMessage App Store
• 2018 (iOS 12): Shortcuts
• 2020 (iOS 14): App Clips, homescreen widgets
• 2021 (iOS 15): Focus modes
• 2022 (iOS 16): Lock screen widgets, Live Activities, Dynamic Island

If you squint a little, you can see the larger vision here. Apple imagines an app ecosystem in which data flows freely between devices: you take a picture here, edit it there, share it over there, save it in that place, all with a few drags and drops. It wants to make apps work between and across your devices. You should be able to access your apps and the data inside them from just about anywhere on your device. In Apple’s wildest dreams, apps aren’t each their own universe; they’re like stars in a solar system, each one part of a larger coherent thing.

In Apple’s wildest dreams, apps aren’t each their own universe

A few of Apple’s own apps are good examples of how this could work. Wallet pulls all your tickets and boarding passes from other apps into one place, no matter where they came from. Home aggregates your many devices across many ecosystems and lets you run your whole smart home in one place. Files provides a file storage system that is theoretically available to any app anywhere. Live Photos and Live Text are system-level features, not apps you have to open just to accomplish a single task.

But when it comes to the rest of the App Store, what have we actually gotten out of all those big ideas? Shortcuts are hugely useful but far too complicated for most users; Siri is mostly just annoying; App Clips and iMessage apps never really took off; I have yet to see an app that makes actual use of the Dynamic Island; 3D Touch is already long gone. In 15 years, for all intents and purposes, apps have only really fundamentally changed in one way: thanks to push notifications and widgets, they can now send you information without needing you to open the app.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

The Dynamic Island hasn’t yet turned into a staple of great apps.

To some extent, it’s just business. Many developers prefer to keep users inside their app as long as possible to juice ad impressions and increase engagement. And Apple certainly has little incentive to blow up the app model as long as it keeps taking a hefty cut of everyone’s subscription fees. “I think they’ve tried to approach stuff like, ‘Hey, here’s a new platform. We’re not just going to put a grid of apps on it. What’s the next level of that?’” says Ryan Jones, a developer of the popular Flighty app. “And so far the magnetic pull of apps has pulled them back towards a grid of apps.”

Maybe that’s why, when I asked a bunch of developers what they’re looking for at this year’s WWDC, their answers were so straightforward. “Most of my wishlist things are more pragmatic and practical,” said Greg Pierce, who builds apps like Drafts and Tally through his company, Agile Tortoise. He said he tries not to even make a wishlist anymore — better to just wait and see.

Pierce and a few others said they’re most hoping to see improvements in SwiftUI, Apple’s cross-platform development system. “Actually writing cross platform code with it is painful,” Pierce said. “You end up having to branch a lot of logic to work one way on one platform and one on the other, stuff that could be improved.” Marcos Tanaka, who builds apps like Play and MusicHarbor, echoed the sentiment. “It is a fantastic framework that has genuinely improved my experience developing for Apple platforms,” he said. “Still, sometimes I stumble upon some bugs and limitations that get in the way, so SwiftUI improvements are always welcome.”

The iPhone in particular is such a mature platform that it’s almost risky to try new things. There are so many users, with so much history and muscle memory, that developers might be foolish to try and break paradigms. Even the platform itself makes it hard to move forward. “You’re deploying an app that has to be backward-compatible several OS versions,” Pierce said, “so you can’t take advantage of those new features.”

Greater than its parts

So far, the rumors and reporting we’ve heard about WWDC 2023 sound like more iterative improvements, particularly for the iPhone. The Biggest New Idea About Apps might be interactive widgets — what if you could use an app without opening an app? — but in general, it sounds like a year of improvements rather than radical changes.

Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales / The Verge

Headsets break the whole app model — they shouldn’t just be app machines, and they shouldn’t have homescreens.

Except a headset demands radical change. Apple has made clear that it doesn’t want to build a full-on metaverse, but it also shouldn’t just turn the platform into a bunch of siloed apps. An all-encompassing device like this just won’t work if you’re constantly switching between apps every time you need new information. Apple has reportedly spent years on supporting hand tracking, facial expression recognition, iris scanning, and other biometric and real-world tools. You’re telling me we’re going to get something called the “Reality Dial,” but I’m still stuck with a dock full of app icons? That just doesn’t feel right.

Apple has made clear that it doesn’t want to build a full-on metaverse, but it also shouldn’t just turn the platform into a bunch of siloed apps

The interaction model of the future can’t be pinching the air in front of you to mimic tapping on a touchscreen. I’m definitely not interested in having to download, log in, set up, and figure out a new app every time I want to try something new. Apps are going to need to be more modular, showing you just the parts you need as you walk down the street or start a new FaceTime call. They’ll have to be faster and simpler because nobody wants to tweak settings on their face. App developers have spent decades building software for rectangles of various shapes and sizes. But in a world filled with headsets, there are no more rectangles.

Changing the way developers see their apps will be tricky. But with the AI onslaught coming fast and a headset forcing users to use a new device in wholly new ways, this is the moment for Apple to come up with a better, more integrated, more natural way to access and interact with information on their devices. To borrow a Steve Jobs-ism: if you see a homescreen, they blew it.

Tesla claims every new Model 3 now qualifies for $7,500 EV tax credit in US

Tesla claims every new Model 3 now qualifies for $7,500 EV tax credit in US

Photo: James Bareham / The Verge

The starting price of a Tesla Model 3 — after federal tax credits — may once again be below the fabled $35,000 mark. Tesla’s website now claims every new Model 3 is eligible for the full $7,500 federal tax credit in the United States, after those credits were previously cut in half on April 18th for the entry-level Standard Range and Long Range RWD models.

Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Tesla’s shopping pages now display this badge.

Here in California, a short distance from Tesla’s Fremont factory, I would pay $41,630 before tax — but only $32,130 after federal and state incentives, assuming Tesla is correct that its cars now qualify for the full federal credit. It could cost less under $30,000 depending on your state’s incentives.

Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge

I’m not counting the company’s “Estimated 6-year gas savings,” because no one will put them back into my wallet.

I say “assuming Tesla is correct,” because as TechCrunch points out, the IRS has not confirmed the news. The agency’s website, last updated June 1st, still shows a $3,750 credit, not $7,500, for the RWD models.

Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge

The reason some cars stopped qualifying is because their batteries didn’t meet sourcing requirements, which specify that 40 percent of their minerals must be “extracted or processed in the United States or a U.S. free-trade agreement partner” and 50 percent of their components must be “manufactured or assembled in North America.”

Those percentages go up each year — by 2027, 80 percent of battery minerals and components must meet those requirements for vehicles to be eligible for the credit.

Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge

Income limits of $150,000 for individuals, $300,000 for married couples filing jointly.

Not every car or family will qualify for the $7,500 tax credit, too: you’ll need to be under a certain income, and you can’t tack too many accessories onto a Tesla or it’ll hit a price cap.

GPD’s G1 is the impressively small dock that could jumpstart eGPUs in the handheld era

GPD’s G1 is the impressively small dock that could jumpstart eGPUs in the handheld era

The GPD G1, next to a pocketable laptop. | Image: GPD

GPD is crowdfunding a new compact external GPU docking station that can both boost the gaming capabilities of some laptops and handheld gaming PCs, and also help anchor them to a desk for mobile workers (via Liliputing).

The company is calling it the G1, and it includes an AMD Radeon RX 7600M XT chip with HDMI 2.1 plus two DisplayPort 1.4 video outputs, a USB 4 / Thunderbolt 4 connector to dock and charge, and something called Oculink (more on that in a bit).

GPD says it’s the “world’s smallest mobile graphics card expansion dock”, at just over an inch thick (29.8mm), around nine inches long (225mm) and four and a third (111mm) deep — all with an integrated power supply.

Image: GPD

GPD isn’t quite the household name, but the Shenzhen, China-based company has been making a bit of a name for itself amongst PC gamers enamored by the recent handheld gaming boom. Currently, this market is held strongly by Valve’s Steam Deck, and there’s strong interest in Asus’ upcoming ROG Ally, but GPD’s been plugging away for years.

Image: GPD

Those in the know are paying attention to other PC gaming handhelds like the Ayaneo 2S and GPD’s Win Max 2, and both companies will sell versions of them that feature an Oculink connector. The Steam Deck isn't designed to support external graphics, so GPD is hoping the G1 graphics dock can be a big differentiator for its own devices — though it says you can use Thunderbolt 3, 4, or USB-4 if you don’t mind having less bandwidth.

The concept of a combined docking station and external graphics card (or eGPU) isn’t new. Alienware helped pioneer the idea with its “Amplifier” external chassis that housed both a high-profile desktop graphics card and USB hub to simply your setup, and eGPU.io is home to a buyer’s guide of the devices that followed. Most recently, Asus has pumped out painfully expensive but compact ROG XG graphics docks with Nvidia RTX 3080 and 3090s that go for up to $2,000.

Image: GPD

GPD shares what cards you’d potentially need to take full advantage of the G1 dock on laptops or desktops.

Both the Alienware Amplifier and the ROG XGs have something in common: they eschew standardization by using different proprietary connectors that only work with their own matching laptops. Meanwhile, Framework is creating a new rear-slot ecosystem that supports add-in GPUs. So is GPD looking to adopt a real standard in comparison? Well, kind of!

The G1 is unusual in that it uses Oculink, which is a connector for PCI-Express that you would more typically see in enterprise server racks. If your laptop has an extra internal M.2 port, it can be outfitted to use this connector and hook up the G1 — potentially giving you reliable and better GPU performance (GPD claims up to 63Gbps bandwidth) compared to the more widely-supported USB4 and Thunderbolt-based (up to 40Gbps) eGPUs. Weak desktop computers could also get in on the action with an Oculink adapter card.

Image: GPD

The G1’s got vents and a fan to keep that GPU cool.

One problem with Oculink, besides not being available in most laptops or handhelds, is that it doesn’t carry the power and data you need to fully dock and charge a PC. So you’d likely not just plug in Oculink but also a USB-C connector to give your laptop or handheld up to 60W of power, and access the three USB-A ports and SD card reader.

Of course, the G1’s GPU and dock will need its own power, but luckily it doesn’t have a massive power adapter like some other eGPU solutions. Instead, the G1 integrates a 240W GaN power supply inside its own chassis.

GPD quotes impressive performance from its RX 7600M, claiming the mobile chip can beat a desktop RTX 3070 GPU in most games. GPD says it tested the 7600M paired with the same Ryzen 7 7840U you’d find in the newest gaming handhelds, versus the 3070 paired with a desktop Ryzen 5600X. That’s basically the same desktop my editor Sean Hollister runs, and he was wowed to see it.

If true, it could make for a remarkably powerful desktop you could fit into a tiny messenger bag — with one gaming handheld, one eGPU the size of a gaming handheld, and three cables (Oculink, USB-C, and AC), plus your mouse and keyboard.

The G1 is on Indiegogo, but the campaign has not yet begun as of this writing. GPD is seeking $20,000HKD to fund the project, but will get the money even if the goal isn’t met. Still, considering GPD has successfully funded almost every product it’s shipped in this manner, we expect the G1 to see the light of day. Mum’s the word on what the G1 will cost though.

Meta will test blocking news for some Canadians ahead of new law

Meta will test blocking news for some Canadians ahead of new law

Nick Barclay / The Verge

Meta will test blocking news content for some users in Canada in response to the country’s Online News Act, the company has announced. The test is expected to impact between one and five percent of the company’s users across Facebook and Instagram, according to ABC News, with affected users being unable to see or share news content on the platforms. Both Canadian and international news outlets will be impacted.

The tests come ahead of a permanent block if the Online News Act passes. The legislation, also known as Bill C-18, is designed to force platforms like Meta and Google to negotiate with Canadian news publishers to pay them for content, but Meta has said it would rather block news content in the country entirely rather than be compelled to pay for it.

“We’ve taken the difficult decision that if this flawed legislation is passed, we will have to end the availability of news content on Facebook and Instagram in Canada,” Meta’s president of global affairs Nick Clegg said in a statement last month. Google, another platform likely to be impacted by the legislation, announced similar news blocking tests in February, and has said it may remove links to news articles in Canadian search results if the bill passes, Reuters previously reported.

“When a big tech company... tells us, ‘If you don’t do this or that, then I’m pulling the plug’ – that’s a threat”

Canadian Heritage Minister Pablo Rodriguez told Reuters that Meta’s tests were unacceptable. “When a big tech company... tells us, ‘If you don’t do this or that, then I’m pulling the plug’ — that’s a threat. I’ve never done anything because I was afraid of a threat,” Rodriguez said.

“All we’re asking Facebook to do is negotiate fair deals with news outlets when they profit from their work,” Rodriguez said in comments reported by Reuters in March. “This is part of a disappointing trend this week that tech giants would rather pull news than pay their fair share.”

Meta’s tests come a little over two years after it blocked news content entirely in Australia in response to a similar piece of legislation. But the block was criticized for its chaotic implementation, with an overly broad approach that impacted some government organizations and nonprofits, and which whistleblowers later claimed was effectively a heavy-handed negotiating tactic. Meta later reversed the block after the legislation was amended. The law went on to pass later that month.

The company previously knows as Facebook has publicly claimed that its approach in Canada will be different from the one it took in Australia, CBC News previously reported. “It’s absolutely our intention to not make the same errors in Canada that we made in Australia,” Rachel Curran, head of public policy for Meta Canada, told Canada’s House of Commons heritage committee last month.

“Some of the things that were mistakenly scoped in Australia, we’re working very hard to make sure we do not do that this time,” Curran said, noting that Meta is working to exempt pages from government bodies, emergency services, and community organizations from any potential block.

Hard Fork: AI Extinction Risk and Nvidia’s Trillion-Dollar Valuation

Hard Fork: AI Extinction Risk and Nvidia’s Trillion-Dollar Valuation “It’s like if you were told that there’s going to be a world-conquering dictator and it’s Mr. Bean.”

Read the emails: Valve helped Nintendo kick the Dolphin Emulator off Steam

Read the emails: Valve helped Nintendo kick the Dolphin Emulator off Steam

The Dolphin Emulator logo, on a black background. | Logo: Dolphin

Did you hear the one about how Nintendo blocked the Dolphin Emulator from making its way to Steam, purportedly with a DMCA takedown? That’s not the whole story.

According to copies of communication that the Dolphin Team provided to The Verge, Valve helped Nintendo kick Dolphin out — first by bringing the Wii and GameCube emulator to Nintendo’s attention in the first place, and second by unilaterally deciding to pull the plug without giving Dolphin an out.

“We operate Steam as an open platform, but that relies on creators shipping only things they have the legal right to distribute”

Valve doesn’t dispute this. “Given Nintendo’s history of taking action against some emulators, we brought this to their attention proactively after the Dolphin team announced it was coming soon to Steam,” Valve spokesperson Kaci Aitchison Boyle tells The Verge.

That feels weird to me — but the emails also show Valve may have had very good reason to nip Dolphin in the bud.

Here’s the entire email that Valve received from Nintendo’s lawyers on May 26th, so you can follow along:

Email via Dolphin Team

“Thank you for bringing the announced offering of the Dolphin emulator on Valve’s Steam store to Nintendo’s attention,” Nintendo’s lawyer says.

Email via Dolphin Team

First, bottom of the first paragraph: “Thank you for bringing the announced offering of the Dolphin emulator on Valve’s Steam store to Nintendo’s attention,” Nintendo’s lawyer says. In a series of Mastodon posts on May 27th, former Dolphin Foundation treasurer Pierre Bourdon suggested that Valve poked the bear, and this — plus Valve’s comment to The Verge — confirms it.

But second, the email confirms this is nothing like a typical “DMCA takedown request” — and that may be why Valve didn’t give Dolphin a chance to combat it.

Nintendo’s lawyer writes (bolding mine):

Wii and Nintendo GameCube game files, or ROMs, are encrypted using proprietary cryptographic keys. The Dolphin emulator operates by incorporating these cryptographic keys without Nintendo’s authorization and decrypting the ROMs at or immediately before runtime. Thus, use of the Dolphin emulator unlawfully “circumvent[s] a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under” the Copyright Act. 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(1).

Distribution of the emulator, whether by the Dolphin developers or other third-party platforms, constitutes unlawful “traffic[king] in a[] technology . . . that . . . is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure . . . .” 17 U.S.C. § 1201(a)(2)(A).

Why am I bolding 1201? I’m not a lawyer, but I spoke to three of them while researching a similar story last year, and they drove home for me that DMCA Section 512 — the one that lets platforms avoid liability for what their users post by swiftly taking things down — is totally different than DMCA Section 1201.

1201(a)(2) says that companies cannot host copyright circumvention technology:

No person shall manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that—

(A) is primarily designed or produced for the purpose of circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title;

(B) has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title; or

(C) is marketed by that person or another acting in concert with that person with that person’s knowledge for use in circumventing a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title.

So it doesn’t matter whether Nintendo properly formatted a DMCA takedown notice, or whether Valve gave Dolphin a chance to speak for itself (narrator: it did not). Nintendo is threatening Valve with a lawsuit, not Dolphin, and Valve can’t sidestep simply by saying “Dolphin filed a counter-notice, go sue them first.” That’s how Section 512 is supposed to work, but not Section 1201.

(Even if it were Section 512, Dolphin doesn’t necessarily have the “right” to a counter-notice — Steam is Valve’s store and it can take down whatever it likes.)

Email via Dolphin Team

This is all the Dolphin Team got from Valve. How likely do you think it is that Nintendo will tell Valve that “the dispute is resolved”?

Now, would Nintendo actually prevail if it sued Valve for distributing a Nintendo Wii and GameCube emulator? That’s impossible to say, but the Dolphin Team confirmed to The Verge that the emulator does ship with a common cryptographic key. Ars Technica’s Kyle Orland spoke to several lawyers who thinks Nintendo might have a decent case because of that, and because it might mean relying on very different precedent than past emulator legal battles.

Nintendo seems to be attempting to brand Dolphin an “illegal emulator,” by the way. Nintendo spokesperson Eddie Garcia provided this statement to The Verge:

Nintendo is committed to protecting the hard work and creativity of video game engineers and developers. This emulator illegally circumvents Nintendo’s protection measures and runs illegal copies of games. Using illegal emulators or illegal copies of games harms development and ultimately stifles innovation. Nintendo respects the intellectual property rights of other companies, and in turn expects others to do the same.

“Valve may simply not be interested in picking that fight with Nintendo on behalf of the Dolphin team,” video game industry attorney Mark Methenitis told Ars. Perhaps Valve was also making up for that time it accidentally plugged a Switch emulator in a Steam Deck ad.

We don’t have to speculate too much about what Valve thinks, though, because Valve provided this full statement to The Verge:

We operate Steam as an open platform, but that relies on creators shipping only things they have the legal right to distribute. Sometimes third parties raise legal objections to things on Steam, but Valve isn’t well positioned to judge those disputes – the parties have to go to court, or negotiate between themselves. An accusation of copyright infringement, for example, can be handled under the DMCA process, but other disputes (like trademark infringement or a breach of contract claim between a developer and a publisher) don’t have a statutory dispute resolution process, so in these cases we generally will cease distributing the material until the parties tell Valve that they have resolved their dispute.

We don’t want to ship an application we know could be taken down, because that can be disruptive to Steam users. Given Nintendo’s history of taking action against some emulators, we brought this to their attention proactively after the Dolphin team announced it was coming soon to Steam.

Based on the letter we received, Nintendo and the Dolphin team have a clear legal dispute between them, and Valve can’t sit in judgment.

On May 26th, Valve told the Dolphin Team that it had removed its emulator from Steam “unless or until both parties notify us that the dispute is resolved.” Since there’s little chance Nintendo will ever proactively support emulation, and Valve has decided not to defend Dolphin, that’s likely as far as this story will go.